Thursday, February 08, 2007

Barry Diller, IAC and Online Content

"Pragmatic Web mogul Barry Diller said IAC/InterActiveCorp will invest several hundred million dollars in original content ventures over the next two years.

Diller noted nearly all of IAC's products, from Citysearch to Match.com, have user content components. But he said professional programming, produced by those who "have the ability to make people laugh" is the future of content, online or off. He added truly amateur content gets a little old "after you've seen a cat have bad relations with a giraffe...100,000 times."

"It will not be a long tail," he went on. "It will be the very short tail, creating very large audiences on occasion, where people make things that resonate with people." He argued the commonly referenced trend of audience fragmentation is not actually happening in a big way-- not yet anyway. "Sites that have traction gain audience....You will see fragmentation inevitably at some point."